Posted 27 April 2014

This week at PlayStation

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Hi there folks. Time once again for your weekly recap. It was a little quiet round these parts by virtue of the Easter holiday weekend here, but that’s not to say PS Blog was devoid of news. We saw a handful of big game announcements (including Tales of Hearts R and GRID Autosport), announced your PS Plus games for May, and hosted fresh videos for Evolve and Watch_Dogs.

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Hi Fred, I found Demon’s Souls in my download list. So I do have it after all. Just started playing it there now and wow it’s class!! Don’t know why I never given it a chance a while back. Suppose I just wasn’t into RPG back then. But if this gameplay is pretty much like Dark Souls then your right, I’m going to love it! Just met my first boss and he killed me straight away. :(

Really? I thought Dark Souls was meant to be harder while others argue Dark Souls 2 being harder due to life lost. Would there be a big difference in which is truly the hardest? Perhaps you find Demon Souls being harder while it was your first game as playing first time is always harder than second or third. Would be great to see a poll to see what most people think is the hardest.

Still no answers about why we only get 2 ps3 plus games every month and US gets 3. Looks like I’ll be buying Tales of Hearts and Tales of Xillia 2 when they are reduced to half price then (or less than £10 for Hearts if it is Digital only), if this silence continues. I would have bought them both at release, plus I would have bought Tales of Symphonia Chronicles, Danganronpa and Final Fantasy 10+10 2 at release as well, but due to SCEE’s current attitude towards their customers I am not buying any games on Sony consoles for full price.

An excellent week, from Muramasa Rebirth being added to the IGC (many thanks for that to the PS+ team), to Tales of Hearts R and the news of Xillia 2’s Day One and collectors editions. Also, a great weekend debate as well.

Now I’m sitting here anxiously awaiting news about Sword Art Online (yeah, I know I keep harping on about it,) as Namco US have just announced it will be released on PSN in America this summer, but Namco Europe have been worryingly silent about it, given that they usually announce both releases together. Would be incredibly excited to see this on the EU PSN as well, which would mean I could buy it digitally and get all the DLC, so I hope this won’t be another case of us EU gamers being treated as second class citizens.

@X_Blood_Curse_X so true about the vita in the US it’s a damn shame. Its like its a forgotten product in the US with the playstation team over there (they don’t even promote it and make no games for it! )

@supersmith2500That’s my plan. Done that last year too. Only problem with that is there is a lot of reading to do on the blog too. lol. So between watching it and reading the blog, hard to do them both same time properly.

Speaking of E3, I wonder if we will be able to watch it on the Vita this year.

I ‘d like to report something strange. I think I encountered a bug or limitation on Vita software. When I started a new game I bought I was hit with the following message:

There is not enough space to save trophy information.Trophy information for the following application will be deleted. Do you want to continue?Treasures of Montezuma BlitzThis trophy information is not saved on the server.

I just clicked OK and started my new game but it is strange. The trophies of Treasures of Montezuma Blitz seem to be gone, even though I have updated them to the server.

Don’t we just miss the hints?! :( lol. And I’m still puzzling myself over deciding to buy the Tales Of games from sale or not. Won’t be long now until it’s over so need to make my mind up quickly. On one hand the sale is too good to pass up. On the other would have the Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls to sink into after Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD. That’s a bit too many games so it should make the decision easy but it doesn’t.

Many Vita games are sold on PSN for less than the standard retail price, as such many retailers refuse to stock it because they feel that they can’t make any money on the games because we’ll just download them instead. And people still believe that digital pricing should beat retail in all cases.

Hi Fred, hope you’ve had a good week. A few things that I hope you can clear up.

1: European releases of digital content keep getting caught up in QA when they seem to release in the US just fine. Is anyone looking at the differences between the SCEE and SCEA processes to try and figure this out and get games out here on time? It was particularly disappointing to see Borderlands 2 HH5 delayed for reasons unknown while Mercenary Kings, a game that should have failed certification remains unpatched to fix its network settings.

2: It was revealed recently on the blog that apparently there are no plans for the Vita 64GB memory card in Europe, I urge you to tell whoever is avoiding that decision to stop dithering and get it done, we need those cards.

3: Last week’s maintenance, a bank holiday Monday and all online functionality of my consoles is deactivated for almost the whole day. Me and my friends don’t get a day off in common very often and the one day we could rely on, we’re all off...

Hi Fred, hope you’ve had a good week. A few things that I hope you can clear up.

1: European releases of digital content keep getting caught up in QA when they seem to release in the US just fine. Is anyone looking at the differences between the SCEE and SCEA processes to try and figure this out and get games out here on time? It was particularly disappointing to see Borderlands 2 HH5 delayed for reasons unknown while Mercenary Kings, a game that should have failed certification remains unpatched to fix its network settings.

2: It was revealed recently on the blog that apparently there are no plans for the Vita 64GB memory card in Europe, I urge you to tell whoever is avoiding that decision to stop dithering and get it done, we need those cards.

3: Last week’s maintenance, a bank holiday Monday and all online functionality of my consoles is deactivated for almost the whole day. Me and my friends don’t get a day off in common very often and the one day we could rely on, we’re all offline by your decree. Would it be possible to look into either separate maintenance cycles for each territory or at least rotating the times so each territory takes it in turns to have their peak time taken away from them.

That’s all for me. Any answer to any of the above would be appreciated. Have a good week Fred.

1. Yes, we hear you. We try our best to ensure that all games make it out at the same time, and I believe if you look back in the history books you should see considerable improvements in this area over the last year or two. That said, there is the occasional issue, eg. Borderlands – we’ll keep you posted on how things progress here.

2. Feedback noted and will be passed along

3. Yes, I appreciate how frustrating that can be (I was trying desperately to download the Infamous update so I could fiddle with Photo Mode!). I’m afraid that the way PS Store works currently dictates that maintenance must take place in all regions at the same time. We are of course conscious of minimising disruption as much as possible.

Occasional issue? There’s missing / delayed content almost every week lately. If it was even worse 2 years ago i really wonder why Sony hasn’t replaced the people responsible long ago.

It’s probably because of the different laws in the different regions of Europe, the same laws Microsoft and Steam dont have a problem with and manage to release content worldwide on the same day. There’s only 1 thing they need to announce at E3, i’m hoping for a decent SCEE team instead of some clowns.

WizzNL – be careful. We absolutely welcome constructive negative feedback, but when you start calling people names, whether they be SCEE staff or other posters, you will attract the attention of moderators.

Here are some games that I’d like to see in this month’ s deal (if there is one):

Rayman Legends: less than 14€Diablo III: less than 19€Grand Theft Auto V: less than 27€Gran Turismo 6:less than 27€The Last of Us: less than 18€Resident Evil 6: less than 8€Dark Souls II: less than 25€Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: less than 6€FEZ: less than 5€

I just don’t get why there seems to be no notion at all to convince Square Enix to release those games in our PSN store too. How many years have we begged? How many years did we get neither a reply at all or a random and simple “I don’t know the reason either” from a Square-Enix CM?

If Shahid managed to convince Namco to localize Tales of Hearts R, via #jrpgvita, what does it take that someone taps Square Enix on their shoulders to simply copy their game file from one store to the other? Why is possible to release Chrono Trigger in Europe on the Nintendo ...

I just don’t get why there seems to be no notion at all to convince Square Enix to release those games in our PSN store too. How many years have we begged? How many years did we get neither a reply at all or a random and simple “I don’t know the reason either” from a Square-Enix CM?

If Shahid managed to convince Namco to localize Tales of Hearts R, via #jrpgvita, what does it take that someone taps Square Enix on their shoulders to simply copy their game file from one store to the other? Why is possible to release Chrono Trigger in Europe on the Nintendo DS, but not on Sony platforms?

As much as I’d love to have that sale I think a short break is needed right now. That Easter sale took a lot out of me. lol. But for another big sale, that would be great to have as-well as the other sale the US got buying games for $1

Also, can we PLEASE get Atelier Totori Plus in New Zealand? It’s available to almost every other country, but not New Zealand, and Tecmo Koei certainly don’t give a damn. It’s a digital-only game for Europe/UK/Australia/NZ, so it shouldn’t be difficult. I’d really like to avoid importing a psychical copy from the US.